The first woman behind the pimp carried a high stool and a white parasol. She was obviously his bottom woman, since she had been entrusted with his throne. She was white. The next eight pens in the bevy carried only their purses and a pent-up expression. The last woman in line, black, carried a shoeshine box with a built-in footrest. His next-to-bottom woman, Oreo surmised. Only the favorites got to do all the extra work. Oreo’s assessment of their relative rank was supported by the fact that all the women except the first and last were wearing similar crotch-high red dresses, while the bottom women wore pink ones that matched Parnell’s suit, enabling the dullest observer to distinguish the stars from the chorus line at a glance.
The group passed Mr. Soundman and came to a halt in front of the next stoop. Parnell casually turned to face the street and crossed his arms. He uncrossed them long enough to snap his fingers, then crossed them again. The white bottom woman placed the stool under his bottom, the parasol over his head, and the pimp sat, one rose-booted foot on the middle rung of the stool, the other straight in front of him. He snapped his fingers again. The black bottom woman approached him, carrying the shoeshine box as though it were a chalice. She lifted his foot from the ground and placed it on the footrest.
The two bottom women then stepped to either side of him. He snapped his fingers again. The two queens nodded to their eight ladies-in-waiting. The first of the eight took a deep breath, knelt before her liege lord, and began shining his shoes. After about five minutes of creaming, buffing, and polishing, the pimp snapped his fingers.
It’s a wonder the friction from all that finger-snapping doesn’t set his phalanges on fire, Oreo was thinking, when she saw that the pimp was repaying his bootblack — or, rather, bootrose — with a boot in the behind. Oreo was alone in her surprise. The two queens were impassive, the ladies-in-waiting stolid. The shoe polisher herself apparently regarded the boot as her customary tip. She merely rubbed her rear and hurried up the steps of the building in front of which all this took place. She disappeared inside.
Oreo did not persist in her surprise when she saw that this ritual was to be repeated through all the women in line: the polishing of the boot, the booting by the boot, the hotfooting it into the building. By the time the last woman had snapped her rag at the rose-colored boots, the sun was virtually recoiling from the surface of the leather. Sunbeams gratefully ricocheted away whenever Parnell wiggled his toes. Another finger-snap and the two queens helped him off his stool, which one retrieved while the other fetched the shoeshine box. As the two women turned to go up the steps, the pimp gave them both a resounding whack on the bottom, this time with his hand, further proof that they held a special place in his balls.
He stood on the sidewalk, one hand on his hip, gazing with shielded eyes at his coruscating boots. All his women were inside, but he seemed to relish just standing there on the sidewalk.
Oreo estimated that half the block was watching from windows and doorways just as she was. Finally, she could stand it no longer. She reached into her handbag and put some loose change in the middle of one of the ten-dollar bills Slim had paid her. She crushed the bill lightly around the coins and bounced down the steps, humming to herself and swinging her cane. She walked briskly past Parnell, smiling a free and open smile.
She was a step beyond him before he spoke. “Hello, big stuff,” he said softly, “where you going with your bad self?”
Oreo didn’t answer.
“Not speaking, huh? Dicty, ain’t you, Miss Siditty? Okay, hello, small stuff,” he said in a put-down voice.
Oreo turned, looked at his crotch, pointedly assessing the cob’s cobs, and said, “Hello, no stuff.”
“Ouch!” he said. “You got me that time, baby.” He smiled and glided toward her.
Oreo smiled back and dropped the money. The coins tinkled all over the sidewalk, but the pimp did not make a move toward them. His eyes glommed on to the ten-dollar bill. Oreo pretended to be preoccupied with gathering all her coins. She turned away from Parnell. In that split second, he bent over to pick up the bill. In the second half of that split second, Oreo turned back to see a lovely close-up of his rear. She drew back her walking stick like a pool cue and (decisions, decisions) leaned toward ball-breaking or buggery. Oh, hell, she decided, I don’t want to get pimp shit all over his nice cane. She switched her grip and instead gave him a grand-slam clout across the ass. If his howl meant anything, it meant that he was now the only person on the block with four cheeks to sit on. Parnell staggered and fell into the gutter. As Oreo ran down the street, she saw three things happen. One, a sanitation truck came into the street. Flush! Two, all up and down the street, witnesses to the flushing, at the extreme edge of hysterical laughter, clung to their windowsills (Parnell’s suit was ruined, but the water merely beaded on his boots and ran back into the gutter). Three, Parnell’s women appeared at the door, a look of revelation on their faces.
11 Cercyon
Oreo catching her breath around the corner
She smiled her cookie smile every time she thought of Parnell’s sodden rise from the gutter. His arms extended like wings away from his soiled and dripping suit, his fingers spoked out from his palms at a web-splitting stretch. Oreo hoped that the look of revelation on the faces of the prostitutes meant that they had discovered Parnell was vulnerable. If one stranger could whip his ass, why not ten friends?
Oreo knew she would have to be careful as she roamed around the neighborhood waiting for her father to show up at the whorehouse. Parnell did not look like the kind who would take to humiliation like a swan to lakes. As soon as he changed his clothes, he would probably be out looking for her — a drag, since she had to hang around to try to catch Samuel before he started catting.
Oreo was hungry. She ducked into a luncheonette, sat in a booth in the back, and ordered a hot-sausage sandwich, a Shabazz bean pie, and a Pepsi.
The woman behind the counter, obviously the owner, was huge, a giant high-yellow Buddha. To the tune of “St. Louis Woman,” she sang, “I hate to see my only son go down, I hate to see my only son go down.” She repeated these lines thirty-seven times. The repetition was driving Oreo mad — she wanted to hear the rest of the parody.
The woman beckoned to her when the sausage was ready. Oreo carried the food to the booth herself. No one else was in the place. The woman did not seem inclined to talk, had merely grunted, to show she had heard, when Oreo ordered, and now went back to her copy of Vogue. Oreo did a double take. Vogue? She had misjudged the woman. Harper’s Bazaar, yes; Vogue, no, she would have sworn. Oreo now saw that she had missed the gaining-circulation squint of the eyes, the condé nast flare of the nostrils. Oreo was disappointed in herself. It was like mixing up the Brontës. After all, Branwell’s staggering style was not Anne’s.